“Pins and needles?” I offer.
“More like knives,” she replies without hesitation. “But I’ll be fine.” She pushes herself up a little and yawns again.
I set my book between my nightdress and the windowpane. “Maybe it’s a side effect. You know, of your transformation,” I say. And now’s my chance: “Have other mermaids ever turned into humans before?”
“I’m not the first,” she replies. She stands and turns her back to me as she opens the wardrobe, revealing a closetful of dresses.
“Where’d those come from?” I ask, my mouth agape as I walk over to the wardrobe.
“I conjured them last night while you were sleeping.”
I want to scold her for doing something so reckless, but they’re incredible. Silk day dresses in pink, cerulean, and deep purple, each with little white collars and pearl buttons. I clutch at my necklace and wonder if those pearls pulse like mine. The evening gowns are even grander. Full skirts and long trains, gold embroidery, and even beading. They’re going to think she is the wealthiest friherrinde in the whole region.
“Do you like?” she asks. “Hopefully they will do the trick.”
I nod eagerly. “What trick?”
“Allowing me to stay,” she says, clutching a Havnestad-blue dress with mother-of-pearl inlay. “Don’t you want me to stay?”
“Of course I do, Mette,” I say, trying out the nickname for the first time. And I realize I mean it. Not only so she can save Nik from his mother’s misguided intentions, but to have a friend who knows magic, who knows the real me. I didn’t know how much I wanted that until I met her. “How long do you have?” I ask, hoping she’ll give me a real answer this time. “I want to help.”
“The magic lasts four full days,” she replies. “I have three left.”
My face falls. “That’s it?”
“But three days becomes forever if, before midnight on the final day, my true love has fallen for me, too.”
Too.
Nik.
Forever.
“I love him, Evie. I really do.” Annemette flops on the bed, no longer the shifty girl holding everything back. More like the girl I used to talk with about boys and gossip in her own grand room. “He’s why I came back. I know he can love me. Didn’t you see us last night?”
“But what if he doesn’t?” I ask. She turns and stares out the window, out at the sea far below.
“What is it?” I come to her and sit on her bed. “Tell me, Mette.”
She shakes her head and buries her face in her hands. When she responds, it’s as if she’s repeating something she read in a book—and maybe she is.
“To come to land in human form a mermaid must complete a magical contract—her life as a mermaid for four days on land.” She pauses and shudders, her chest heaving slightly. “She may not return to the sea after those four days, for she can never again be a mermaid.”
My stomach practically tumbles to my feet. “Wait... youdie?” What kind of dark magic did she do? Nik is wonderful, amazing, the best guy I know—but to risk her life for someone she barely knows?
She sits up and nods. “I know. It’s crazy. But you don’t get it. He’s what I’ve been missing. I knew he was mine when he fell into the sea. Intomyarms. And to be human? Evie, you don’t know how lucky you are.”
I don’t even know what to think. Of course I want her to live, and I want them both to be happy, but how can this work? Falling in love in four days seems... unrealistic, to say the least.
I temper my words carefully. “How can you tell when he truly loves you?”
Annemette’s face goes dreamy again. “True love’s kiss is all I need.”
I almost laugh. Now it’s unrealisticandridiculous. So much so, I’m completely incredulous. “A kiss, really? Your life for a kiss? That’s it? That’s some magic.”
“It’s the feeling in the kiss. I’ll know. The magic will know.”
I think of Nik on the steps—enchanted, yes, but inlove? No. Not yet, anyway.
